Crisis at the border

With cooperation between local government, religious organizations and volunteers, Mayor Jim Darling’s city of McAllen is dealing as best it can with a problem that is growing day by day.

But rather than respond with some of the hatefulness we have heard from our citizens and elected officials, not to mention some very distorted information and scare tactics, the people of McAllen are responding with kindness and compassion.

Sounds to me as though the good people of McAllen know what it means to “love thy neighbor.”

— Diane C. Etzel, Fort Worth

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When we go beyond the emotions involved in seeing so many children alone at our border, aren’t there some questions that need to be answered?

How do that many children travel alone across those great distances without someone providing food, water and shelter?

How do the children decide to leave their parents and families and strike out on their own to some unknown place?

Why are there suddenly so many?

None of this makes sense. Someone had to have helped many of those youngsters along the way. Who and why?

I find myself wondering if the leaders of the drug cartels are providing these children with help to get to the border.

Are the cartels paying the parents of the children, in effect buying the children?

Is the idea to overwhelm the system along our borders because we must feed, house, clothe and educate these youngsters?

My heart goes out to the children because they are pawns in a social problem. I hope that our political leaders will think through the problems presented and realize that they must come up with a solution.

— Carol Graves, Fort Worth

Two points on illegal immigration.

• If children can enter our country illegally, is it possible that adults that plan to do us harm might find access attractive to them as well?

• The current immigrant policy for illegal immigrants is bigoted. Will our approach be the same when boatloads of children from sub-Saharan Africa, Syria or other parts of the impoverished world are dumped on our shore?

How can you turn them away when those from south of the border are not? Lack of a policy of enforcement can, and likely will, have negative consequences.

This is not about compassion, it is about a reality. Lifeboats sink when overloaded.

Obama says we need comprehensive immigration reform. What we need is a new immigration enforcer.

We do need a way for legal immigration to be expedited for those who can come here and contribute to our society. Unless we enforce the border, however, why use a legal process at all?